


Unexpected Variables

by Princex_N



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Autism, Carlos is Autistic, Cecil Is a Good Boyfriend, Conversations, Disability, Edited: 4/23, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Moving In Together, Nonverbal Communication, PECS Books, Post-Live Show: Condos, Self-Injurious Stimming, Sensory Overload, Stimming, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Carlos had been excited when he and Cecil had finally decided to move in together.He had somehow failed to anticipate this.





	Unexpected Variables

**Author's Note:**

> I'm nowhere near caught up, but i've been meaning to write a wtnv fic for Forever, so here I am anyway!!
> 
> Edit: I just listened to 'Condos' and I'm?? dead. So I rewrote this fic a bit. (Plus can I just say that, "scientists don’t communicate directly. Everybody knows that. They communicate using a series of obscure and arcane codes and signals." kind of definitely sounds like a form of AAC?)

Carlos had been excited when he and Cecil had finally decided to move in together.

He had somehow failed to anticipate this.

He had known, of course, that there would be an adjustment period. Change is difficult to cope with, and this was quite a change after all. He had known that things weren’t going to be perfect, he has learned that, perhaps the hard way.

It hadn’t _seemed_ like a big deal at first. They had decided to move into Carlos’s apartment, since it was slightly bigger but still roughly the same distance from the station as Cecil’s apartment had been. The sorting of belongings hadn’t been too difficult either, since Carlos didn't own much in terms of furniture in the first place (he had the basics – a stool for the bar, a bed, and a dresser – and he had _meant_ to go out and get other things, like a couch or a table, but he had continuously been distracted by more important and interesting things). So, Carlos hadn’t had to move many of his things, since he hadn’t had many to begin with.

So overall, things had gone about as well as they could have, in Carlos’s opinion. There were still hiccups, little imperfections, here and there. Like Cecil heading home to the wrong house before remembering that he had moved, or Carlos having to readjust to sitting on a couch rather than on the floor, but nothing had been particularly bad.

That is, until tonight.

Carlos isn’t very good at explaining feelings, so he can’t exactly explain _why_ this is happening, but he is, by now, quite used to dealing with bad sensory days.

He is not, however, quite so used to dealing with them when there is another person in the house.

(He had, at some point, but once he had moved out of his parent’s house he had always lived alone. He had gotten used to it, his parents would probably say that he had gotten spoiled by it.)

He had come home from work early, after he had broken three test tubes and had ultimately found himself completely unable to concentrate through all of the Everything that was going on around him. He had hoped that he would be able to work through all of this alone, before Cecil came home. And he _had_ been trying.

It just hadn’t really worked.

Still, Carlos managed to drag himself through the evening without giving himself away. The little touches that Carlos usually appreciated were agonizing, but were made bearable by the sound of Cecil’s voice as he talked about his day over dinner. Even if Cecil’s presence made stimming a little harder (Don’t flap, he sits so close that you’ll hit him. Don’t hum or groan, you’ll interrupt him when he’s talking, and the noise annoys people. Don’t rock _too_ much, the movement jostles and annoys people), Carlos had been confident that he could make it through the night without incidence, and just sleep this off or something.

Carlos cannot make it through the night without incidence.

He has been _trying_ , but it isn’t working, and he knows what he _would_ do, if he was alone. If he had been alone, he would have sat up and stimmed until the buzz of over-stimulation finally melted away, and then he could have just laid back down and gone to sleep.

But he is not alone, he is lying next to Cecil, who is curled up and sleeping peacefully, and the last thing Carlos wants to do is disturb him.

Carlos knows that Cecil knows that Carlos is far from perfect. He knows that Cecil probably _wouldn’t_ mind if Carlos happened to wake him up. He knows that it isn’t the big deal that he’s making it out to be. But some things are just ingrained into him, and this is unfortunately one of them.

There is a reason that he’s never been in this situation before. Usually on days like this, Carlos lets Cecil know beforehand that he’s not feeling up for company, and Cecil says that he understands and he doesn’t come over that night.

But _this_ is Cecil’s home now, and Carlos doesn’t get to push him out of it just because he’s uncomfortable.

He knows that Cecil’s reaction wouldn’t differ much. Cecil’s reactions to things don’t really tend to differ much, especially when it comes to Carlos, but Carlos can’t bring himself to test this hypothesis. He doesn’t have any _real_ experience with this situation, and the heat of the moment is not an ideal environment for an experiment like this.

Carlos _wants_ to be able to enjoy this like he usually does – the pressure of Cecil pressed against his side, the softness of the blankets wrapped around them, the quiet little noises that Cecil makes in his sleep. But he can’t, tonight. Tonight, it’s just adding to the Too Much and Carlos finds that he can’t handle it anymore.

He disentangles himself from the sheets and Cecil’s limbs a bit frantically, biting his tongue to keep a strangled noise from escaping, and nearly falls over when he forces his uncoordinated limbs up and out of bed. He stumbles through the door unsteadily; he doesn’t entirely know where he wants to go, but he knows that he can’t be in there.

After a brief contemplation, he winds up in the bathroom, with the door shut firmly behind him and the shower curtain drawn. The bathtub is dry and cool and the curtain blocks out enough of the light that his eyes don’t smart with the brightness, and Carlos can sit without touching anything, which helps, but only slightly.

He rocks because it helps, but still can’t hum because it’s the middle of the night, and he’s been disruptive enough already. None of it helps, not really, and a minute later he gives in and digs his teeth into his arm. It alleviates some of the burn of overload that’s racing under his skin, and Carlos could cry in relief, if he wasn’t already crying.

He doesn’t know exactly _how_ long this goes on for (time isn’t real after all, and meltdowns make time even more meaningless than it usually is), but it goes on – the rocking and the biting and the desperately trying to avoid making noise – and then he hears the bathroom door open.

Cecil says something that echoes uncomfortably around the bathroom’s tile, but Carlos can’t understand exactly what it is that he’d said. There is a pause, and then a few minutes later, the door shuts again and Carlos can hear Cecil settle down on the floor on the other side of the tub. He doesn’t try to pull back the shower curtain, which Carlos appreciates.

Carlos hums, because Cecil is _already_ awake, and bites, even though he knows he shouldn’t, and he rocks, until finally, _finally_ something settles and he can breathe again, and things have faded back into their usual tolerable level of sensation. Carlos wipes his arm off on his pants, trying not to think about the forming bruises, and pokes his head out from behind the shower curtain.

It takes Cecil a moment to notice him, but when he does, he beams. Carlos doesn’t feel like he could organize his muscles or words into speech, so he doesn’t say anything, though he does make an effort to force his face into an approximation of a smile.

“Hi,” Cecil says, and then he reaches around to his other side and pulls out Carlos’s PECS book. Carlos pushes the shower curtain back a bit more, and balances the binder on the lip of the tub. “Are you feeling better?”

[Okay] Carlos finds, and quickly decides that he doesn’t like the sound of the Velcro at the moment. He points at the card instead.

“Good!” Cecil says, his voice pitched happy and relieved, and Carlos’s hands flap slightly at the sound. “I,” Cecil hesitates, “This wasn’t… my fault, was it?”

[No] Carlos taps, a bit vehemently. He hits the card a few more times, for emphasis, and then starts flipping through pages. [Sensory Overload] [Not] [You].

Cecil sighs, relieves, and Carlos wonders if he had been feeling guilty this whole time. “It’s not usually this bad,” Cecil comments, which is true. This is hardly the first time that he’s seen Carlos overloaded or melting down, Carlos isn’t _that_ good at hiding these things from other people, but it is one of the worst. “What was different?”

Carlos hesitates, but reminds himself a bit forcefully that communication is a healthy and necessary component to any relationship. A series of decisions. He flips the page. [Loud] he indicates.

“I was?” Cecil’s voice doesn’t tremble upset, but echoes brittle, like he’s trying to not be upset.

Carlos shakes his head, a little frustrated with himself. He points to himself, and then grimaces, all too aware of the limits of this form of AAC. He flips to the back of the binder, where the cards that have been largely untouched since Carlos moved out of his parent’s house reside. [No humming] he taps, and then points to himself again.

Cecil examines the card with an expression that Carlos can’t really read. “Does humming help?” he asks eventually.

[Yes]

“Well then,” Cecil says definitively, and then he reaches over, pulls off the [No humming] card, and tosses it directly into the trashcan. “You should hum as much as you need to.”

Carlos finds himself more speechless than he usually is.

“Sorry,” Cecil says abruptly, “Oh gosh, was that rude? Of course it was, these are your words, not mine. I got a little carried away there, I can get it back.”

Carlos reaches up and snags the edge of Cecil’s sleeve before the other man can get up, and shakes his head. He leans in closer, careful not to topple the PECS book over, and waits for Cecil’s nod before pressing a kiss to his boyfriend’s lips.

When they part, Cecil has that goofy little smile on his face, the one that’s always there after they kiss. “Are you okay to go back to bed?” he asks, after a moment of the two of them simply looking at each other.

Carlos winces. [No]. The biting edge of overload is gone, but Carlos doesn’t want to push himself and bring it back all over again, and the bed seems like it would be too much at the moment.

“Hm,” Cecil hums out, sounding thoughtful and not at all upset. “Is the couch better? Or do you want to be alone?”

Carlos doesn’t have a card for ‘couch’, though maybe he should now that he actually has one. [Sit] he chooses instead, because the thought of sitting next to Cecil on the couch with something quiet playing on the television sounds a lot better than the thought of continuing to sit alone in the shower. Cecil beams as he helps Carlos out of the shower, careful not to touch more than necessary.

Carlos doesn’t know what stars aligned so that he could meet a man as wonderful as Cecil. Things aren’t ‘perfect’, because Cecil isn’t perfect, and because Carlos is quite far from perfect, but sometimes Carlos feels like this is as perfect as two people could ever hope to get within their lifetimes. Carlos doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, in fact, he doesn’t think that he deserves Cecil at all, but, he will be eternally grateful that he has him anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a bad sort of night and wound up writing this! I've also been doing a lot of research into AAC, and so I decided to give Carlos a PECS book because why not!? He used it a lot when he was a kid, and less so now that he's an adult, but he keeps it for the days when he's nonverbal or just doesn't feel like talking!  
> For those who don't know, [this](http://kidsworldacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/08/Books.jpg) is what a PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) book typically looks like. The cards are attached onto pages using velcro, and the velco strip at the bottom edge of the binder is used for arranging full sentences!  
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
